#ninth reads op

[thewormsdontstop]

"no its fine I'll just use the slightly less sharp side of the sword" zoro those people are bleeding

[perrin-aybaras-hammer]

I kept expecting Abigail Pent to show up during the last third of Mulholland Drive to tell the characters this isn't how it happened.

[youaremysunshine-court]

Oh hey also we need more books about people attracted to only one sex meeting a genderfluid/gnc person and doing a coming out bc im actually lowkey tired of questioning whether or not a character would fuck me bc my gender changes depending on the day

[r0semultiverse]

Is there free audio listen-alongs out there for these skeleton gays that y’all post about? 💀

[thelegendontour]

Yesterday I finished the books and I'm still in shock, be back in 7 to 10 working days after I finished all my tears looking at this wonderful piece of art 🫠

“One flesh, one end”

Yes my brain is currently rotting because of these two thanks for asking. The idea for this illustration was so vivid in my mind after reading the first book that I decided it was worth the time and effort I put into it!

I told you there were going to be more fanarts ;)

(Tap on the pic for high quality and pls do not repost without credit)

[canniefish]

for the art prompt "mouse world" - necromantic scions & cavaliers primary of the eighth and ninth mouse houses

aka op suffers from chronic symptoms of "read way too much redwall in middle school"

[biracy]

I'm being a CUNTTTTT sorry but this post has 20k notes they can take it. As SOON as op mentioned "bone magic" I knew this was about tlt (their last chronological reblog was making fun of Gideon the Ninth for daring to be funny I guess) and the funny thing about that is that tlt is literally nothing like this at all. The author, Tamsyn Muir, never "pretends she's above the very things she's selling herself on," and if you're mistaking Gideon's in-character narration for one book (where she, having grown up around necromancy for her whole life, generally finds it uninteresting and tunes out of conversations about it, and also associates it with someone she hates) for the voice of the author I don't know if you actually know very much about reading books. If you actually read all three tlt books and not ooc Gideon the Ninth quotes on Goodreads you would know this. Tlt is immensely earnest and a genuine exploration of sci-fi/fantasy where necromancy is explored EXTREMELY in-depth, especially if you actually bother to read on to narrators like Harrow or John. Having a snarky main character for again, one book, does not negate this. Is Star Wars suddenly "self-loathing fake sci-fi" because one of its snarky leads calls the Force a bunch of hocus-pocus in a couple scenes? Am I seriously here saying "the voice of a character is not necessarily the voice of the author" to a bunch of people who never shut up about how Media Literate they are. Anyway go read Gideon the Ninth because it's very very very good

[branewurms]

the number of ppl i come across like “gideon the ninth was so good but after gideon dies why would i continue” and everyone else is replying like “hon this is literally a series about necromancy” and the OP will be like “…oh 😮”

i just stumbled across one of these in a reddit thread where the OP was complaining they wouldn’t continue bc of this “wasted potential” and then came the replies like “lol necromancy” and there were OTHER ppl like OP chiming in with “OH i had abandoned that series! now i have to go back!”

i am thinking of the number of ppl who must have entirely abandoned the series after that but never complained about it online and thus will never actually Find Out and it makes me want to TEAR out my HAIR

Y’ALL I DON’T UNDERSTAND THE DISCONNECT HERE

YOU ARE READING BOOKS ABOUT AN ENTIRE CIVILIZATION RESURRECTED FROM THE DEAD

ADD THESE TWO DIGITS TOGETHER PLS I BEG

eta: there was even the WHOLE THING with the NERVE GAS that killed EVERYONE EXCEPT BB GIDEON!!! COME ON (● ˃̶͈̀ロ˂̶͈́)੭ꠥ⁾⁾

[quailfence]

[Image description: Four gifs from Doctor Who. Jack Harkness is telling a story to Rose Tyler, Mickey Smith, and the Ninth Doctor. Jack is using empathic gestures while he talks, and the other characters grin and laugh.

Jack: And then it roars, and we are running. Oh my God, we are running! And Brakovitch falls, so I turn to him and I say- Mickey: I knew we should've turned left! Jack: That's my line! Rose: I don't believe you. I don't believe a word you say ever.

End description.]

[Plain text: Doctor Who | 1.11 - "Boom Town". End plain text.]

@dw-described

Doctor Who | 1.11 - "Boom Town"

[dragonretirement]

I'm trying to puzzle something out TLT lorewise, namely: what the hell does "Resurrection-purity" mean with regard to family lineages?

The term shows up four times in the series. I put them under the cut for easy reference, but the gist of it is that in the Cohort Intelligence Files, Isaac, Jeannemary, and Babs are all identified as belonging to "Resurrection-purity" families. The fourth reference is in chapter 3 of HTN, where we learn that Drearburh "had never practiced Resurrection purity."

I searched online to see if people have tried to figure this out before, and mainly found this post from a couple years ago where a few possible meanings were tossed around: maybe it means that the family can trace its lineage to 1) solely people from within their house, or 2) the founding necromancer/cavalier of their house, or 3) solely people who were resurrected by Jod during the Resurrection.

1 is contradicted by the fact that Isaac, who comes from a Resurrection-purity family, is described in the files as possibly being affianced (aka arranged to be married) to Abigail Pent's nephew, presumably a Fifth-houser.

2 is contradicted by the passage in HTN, which states that Drearburh doesn't practice Resurrection purity, as "their only aim was to keep the necromantic lineage of the tomb-keepers unbroken", implying that Resurrection-purity is something different (since the first tomb keeper was also the Ninth's founding necromancer, Anastasia).

3 is the most common-sense reading if you just think about the term, but I had initially dismissed it because my understanding after NTN was that the Nine Houses are populated entirely by descendants of the Resurrection, meaning all families would be "Resurrection pure". The precise origin of people outside the Nine Houses (like the BOE and the colonies) isn't 100% confirmed, though popular interpretation is that they're the descendants of the ships Jod wasn't able to capture during the Resurrection. I assumed that there was no significant intermarriage between the Nine Houses and the colonies, but then I went back to the HTN passage.

The line about Resurrection purity is preceded by the information that one of Harrow's ancestors was "an extramural penitent sworn into the silent marriage bed of the Locked Tomb." I had assumed this meant someone from another house, because there are other references in the series to the fact that the Ninth takes religious penitents from other houses. But what if "extramural" means beyond the Nine Houses-- aka, from the colonies?

The word choice itself doesn't really give us a solid answer- "extramural" means "beyond the walls/boundaries" of something, so the question is whether it means the boundary of the House or of the Empire. The only other appearance of the word extramural in the series is in Dr. Sex, where Dulcinea writes that she wishes Prot's son would bring her "extramural magazines and cigarettes". This also isn't conclusive, she could be talking about magazines from outside the Seventh or from outside the Houses.

So that's what I'm left with! The only definition of "Resurrection-purity" that makes sense to me is one that also uproots our (or at least my) understanding of the relationship between the Houses and the colonies, and implies that the Houses have absorbed enough people from the colonies into their House structures to make a family lineage traced back solely to the Resurrection an anomaly. I'm hoping there's something I've overlooked that would help us say one way or another, so please offer your theories!

References to Resurrection purity:

Cohort Intelligence Files:

"Naberius Tern, born on Ida, home Ida of the Third House. Only child of the previous cavalier primary. Resurrection-purity family, line has been serving Ida and providing cavaliers historically."

"Isaac Tettares, born on Tisis. Resurrection-purity family, the eldest of eight."

"Jeannemary Chatur, born on Ops. Resurrection-purity family, second of six. Being the first non-necromancer of the line, she is her generation’s Chatur."

Harrow the Ninth, chapter 3:

"The Reverend Daughter Harrowhark Nonagesimus ought to have been the 311th Reverend Mother of her line. She was the eighty-seventh Nona of her House; she was the first Harrowhark. She was named for her father, who was named for his mother, who was named for some unsmiling extramural penitent sworn into the silent marriage bed of the Locked Tomb. This had been common. Drearburh had never practiced Resurrection purity. Their only aim was to keep the necromantic lineage of the tomb-keepers unbroken. Now all its remnant blood was Harrow; she was the last necromancer, and the last of her line left alive."

[spngirlpolls]

self indulgent poll bc it’s MY poll blog okay. also if you have book suggestions you are always encouraged to send them my way

[transformers-mosaic]

Transformers: Beast Wars - Second Chances - Page 1

Originally posted on February 2nd, 2011

Story - Shaun Flaherty Art - Cory Holmes Colours - Roy Stiffey Letters - HdE

deviantART

wada sez: Like many Mosaic strips, and official tie-in media from 3H Productions, Beast Wars - Second Chances aims to show the fates of various characters who were left on Earth at the end of the cartoon. Tarantulas was presumed destroyed in the episode “Other Victories”, but clearly some vestige of him remains! “Operation: Ninth Eye” was reportedly an idea of Mike Priest’s, a reference to Tarantulas oddly having nine eyes instead of eight in beast mode. See below for Shaun Flaherty’s original script, which was dated to April 21st, 2009. In addition, each of the writers on Beast Wars: Second Chances contributed a personal bio explaining their history with the franchise; you can find Shaun’s “Writer Spotlight” below as well.

PAGE ONE (six panels)

Panel 1.  Prehistoric Earth, as seen from space.

CAP: Earth.

Panel 2.  Outside a cave.  It is surrounded by quiet, desert terrain.

CAP: Four million years ago…

CAP/COMPUTER VOICE: “…Three --

CAP/COMPUTER VOICE: “-- Two --

CAP/COMPUTER VOICE: “-- One --”

Panel 3.  Inside the cave.  It is one of Tarantulas’s abandoned laboratories/lairs.  It is dark, but just enough sunlight spills in from outside to see that it is filled with deactivated equipment.  A monitor glows green, but what is on its screen is not visible.

Reference: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cssWMayeniQ (1:29) wada sez: dead link Tarantulas’ lair

COMPUTER VOICE (OP): -- Zero.

COMPUTER VOICE (OP): Countdown sequence complete.

COMPUTER VOICE (OP): Initiate Operation: Ninth Eye.

Panel 4.  Equipment comes to life.  Lights come on.  An arachnoid skitters.  On a monitor is a body of text; it reads as follows in Cybertronix (Predacon characters):

OPERATION: NINTH EYE

FRAG IT. TORCH THE SLAG OUT OF EVERYTHING.

Reference: Arachnoid Cybertronix

COMPUTER VOICE (OP): Initiating.

TARANTULAS (OP): Hm-me-he-hee…

Panel 5.  More equipment comes to life.  More lights come on.  More arachnoids skitter.  On a monitor is a wire-frame schematic of Arachnid (beast mode).  On another monitor is a wire-frame schematic of Transmetal Tarantulas (robot mode).

Reference: Arachnid Tarantulas

TARANTULAS (OP): M-ma-ha-ha-ha!

Panel 6.  An extreme close-up of the monitor from Panel 3.  On its screen is an extreme close-up of a green, digital representation of Tarantulas’s (robot mode) face; he laughs maniacally.

Reference: Tarantulas (Seibertron) Tarantulas (TFWiki)

TARANTULAS: Mah-he-hee-ha-ha-ha!!!

Believe it or not, the project that became BEAST WARS: Second Chances began over a year ago. In September 2008, Josh van Reyk, one of the creative minds behind Transformers: Mosaic, pitched the idea of a Beast Wars one-shot to a handful of us writers and we ran with the idea!  Hundreds of email messages ensued as we hammered out the story.  A lot of great stuff ended up on the "cutting room floor" as we tried to cram as much Beast Wars awesomeness into 22 short pages as possible. So, that's the beginning of how this baby came together, but what about me?  What's my story?  In case you're wondering, here's a taste: My name is Shaun Flaherty.  I am 30 years old and newly married.  I went to school for acting and currently manage a health club. But before all that, there were Transformers. Being born at the very end of the Seventies, I was a Star Wars kid, but soon after the Jedi returned, I discovered something else.  On my first day of kindergarten in 1984, my father presented me with Optimus Prime and 25 years later I still love robots in disguise. Fast-forward a decade or so, past weekday afternoons and a Movie, past reruns and Generation 2.  I discovered Beast Wars late one Saturday morning on a crappy little TV with terrible reception and it was love at first sight. Five delightful seasons (including Beast Machines) and then it was gone. DreamWave promised more, but delivered only one short story.  IDW promised more, but delivered something that wasn't quite the Beast Wars that I had in mind. Our goal with BEAST WARS: Second Chances is to recapture magic, even if only for a moment.  Our goal is for Second Chances to feel like Beast Wars to you. Although the finished product is still a way's away, we hope you'll like what you'll see. -- Shaun Flaherty

[quailfence]

[Image Description: Nine gifs from Doctor Who. Image 1: The Ninth Doctor tells Rose, "You could come with me. This box isn't just a London hopper, you know. It goes anywhere in the universe free of charge."

Image 2: The Tenth Doctor tells Donna, "You could always come with me."

Image 3: Ten tells Martha, "I just thought since you saved my life and I've got a brand new sonic screwdriver which needs road testing, you might fancy a trip."

Image 4: Eleven tells Amy, "Come with me."

Image 5: Eleven tells River, "Travel with me, then."

Image 6: Eleven tells Clara, "The thing about a time machine, you can run away all you like and still be home in time for tea, so what do you say? Anywhere. All of time and space, right outside those doors.

Image 7: Twelve tells Bill, "Time And Relative Dimension In Space. It means, what the hell?"

Image 8: Thirteen tells Graham, Yaz, and Ryan, "When I pull that lever, I'm never quite sure what's going to happen. You're not going to come back as the same people that left here. Be sure. All of you, be sure."

Image 9: Ruth Clayton cries out, "Try my guided tour!" End description.]

[Plain text: I know my own life. I’m a tour guide. End plain text.]

@dw-described

I know my own life. I’m a tour guide.

[princesscolumbia]

Peanut Butter...Chocolate...Lyctoral Consumption...Murder?

So I just got done reading an interesting examination of a moment in Nona the Ninth where Alecto emerges from the depths of Nona's consciousness and chastises Pyrra "I'm not the Lyctor, I'm the (he) Or (she) who Lyct Up" Dve. It was good, it was solid, and it was done with the understanding that OP didn't know for sure as they're not Tasmuir.

So you can imagine what a baseball bat to the head it was to see a Psych AU post where Shawn is dead and haunting Gus.

So guess what fell out of the piñata that is my imagination:

Shawn and Gus were born on the Sixth. They weren't supposed to be doing anything with the lyctoral process, but you know how Shawn is...and Gus is always a step behind. You know how they're "Ride or Die"? Well, Shawn is just smart enough ("...a brilliant mind with no impulse control." -Palamedes, who upon meeting Gideon is eternally but silently grateful that she and Shawn never met) piece together how to become a lyctor just from the available material and a few clever questions to the currently living lyctors without ever stepping foot in Canaan House. Because Shawn's knowledge and understanding of the process is SUPER limited, even more so than Ianthe's when she ate Naberius, they're unaware that one of them's gonna die as part of the process, and it's not going to be the necromancer...which is Gus.

Gus goes along with it because he knows Shawn is going to loop in some other more gullible adept and doesn't want anyone to be dealing with Shawn on one of his hyperfixations that isn't used to dealing with him.

Things are going well...until they aren't, and Shawn realizes he's gonna die, but he figures out how to modify the process while they're in the middle of a failed ascension and they become a lyctor...sorta.

Shawn winds up 'haunting' a now ungodly powerful and immortal Gus. Shawn's spirit is inhabiting Gus' body at the same time as Gus' spirit is "consuming" Shawn's, but since Shawn isn't a braindead result of a transference that's intended to be strictly one way, Shawn is 'eating' Gus' spirit at the same time, creating a cycle where both are feeding each other in perfect lyctoral harmony. They don't twig the Resurrection Beasts because "sin" =/= "dumbass fuckup" and Shawn isn't, strictly speaking, dead. It's a symbiosis rather than a parasitic relationship.

So here these two dumbasses are, neo-lyctors, standing over Shawn's dead body. They figure out that they're going to be so screwed if they're caught and someone figures out what they did, so they destroy the body and bug out as fast as possible...

...landing in the midst of BoE on one of the non-Empire human-occupied systems. They're doing their best to lay low and not twig anyone to the fact that they're from the Empire (Gus, thanks to the neo-lyctorhood, looks like a fine, fit, and dare we say sexy man, so nobody pegs him for a necromancer) and Shawn figures out how to do a fancy kinda-sorta projection where he can actually interact with the physical world while still bonded to Gus.

One day there's a murder nearby and Shawn sees all the clues to figure out who-dun-it, and Gus is all, "Naw, man, they're gonna pick us out as Imperial the second those cops see us!"

Shawn, of course, does everything possible to draw attention to the clues, which catches the attention of (you guessed it) Lassie and his partner. Lasiter is suspicious but can't prove anything because the usual 'tells' for a necromancer or lyctor aren't turning anything up. Shawn feeds Gus some line about some grandparent from a few generations back being an expat from the Empire and so Gus is "able to receive messages from the spirit realm" (just Shawn, obvi) and because they can't prove there's a more direct connection to the Empire than that, the police are forced to let Gus go.

Things play out fairly similar to the pilot of Psych from that point forward, but with Gus having to be the point-man for the whole thing while Shawn is getting better and better at manipulating the world around him, including being able to visually manifest by the time Juliet arrives on-planet. She's one of the refugees of a planet destroyed by a lyctor and is absolutely the best officer ever when it comes to hunting down necros...but since none of her tools or experience include anything like what Shawn and Gus have become, she doesn't figure it out for several years, by which point she's fallen in love with Shawn.

Until we get AtN, I have no idea how this would shake out, but my ideal scenario is somehow Paul and Kirona wind up on this BoE planet that Shawn and Gus are on.

[machiroads]

Machi's 2024 Media Year in Review

Books, games, manga, and other quality content that kept the lights on in '24

YEAH DUDE

The Culture Code - Daniel Coyle: Book of the year for me, a recommendation from one of my corporate overlords. A really insightful look into what makes organizations good

Blood - Dr. Jen Gunter: Runner up book of the year. A scientific deep dive into the female reproductive system. Still cursing my uterus afterwards tho, just in a slightly more intelligent way

Tiger Tiger: Webcomic of the year. Women can't do anything? Wouldn't it be unfortunate if one did a ruse to stow away on a boat and cavorted with a dormant god of evil and studied sea sponges and rebuffed romantic advances from the most hateable guy of all time.

Detroit: Become Human: An offhand addendum from a @plusultraetc fic got me to finally buy this, which has been in my Steam wishlist for like. Years. The controls were a bit wonky to get used to, but I did 2 full playthroughs in the span of like. A month. I would die for u Kara and Alice. Also Clancy Brown 💖

Cat Cafe Manager: Got this one on sale, and 100%-ed it in like. 2 weeks. Very cute, no notes.

Spy x Family: Manga of the year for me even though I don't really post about it! Read Spy x Family!!!

The Barbie Movie: I finally watched it. Cried. Refer back to Blood above re: the fun of BEING A WOMAN

Knives Out: Glass Onion: I finally watched this one too. Daniel Craig in his little outfits. A surprise tweest. Dunking on rich people. It's got it all.

Youtube: I probably watch way too much youtube. A selection of channels that sustained me in the year 2024: Jet Lag: The Game, Drawfee, Tia Weston, Midwest Magic Cleaning (and the broader cleantube), Maigomika, Strange Aeons, Sarah Spaceman, Kiun B, Rachel & Jun, Evan & Katelyn

SURE WHY NOT

This Is How You lose the Time War - Amal El-Mohtar, Max Gladstone: Yes I read the bigolas dickolas wolfwood book. A pretty quick read, and I enjoyed the epistolary format, though the nonlinear timeline donked my brain a bit

Papers, Please: The youtube algorithm decided to show me vtubers playing this and I remembered I'd bought it several years ago and only played a few days before I decided it was too hard. Turns out there's an easy mode! I would die for u Jorgi.

Cascade Failure - L.M. Sagas: JUST finished this one (another rec from @plusultraetc). As much as I am tantalized by Firefly and its spacewestern ilk, I found this to be slightly too fast-paced for my tastes, I would have liked to chew on the worldbuilding a bit more. Jal & Saint are very pwecious to me though. Anke is on THIN ICE.

Frieren: This was a Rachel & Jun recommendation, and I enjoyed a lot of the earlier arcs, but the later arcs seem to be wandering into a bit of power/threat level creep.

Yomi no Tsugai: Arakawa Hiromu's current series. I have the memory of a goldfish and forget it exists half the time because it only updates monthly. Not grasping me quite as strongly as FMA or Silver Spoon, but still quality Arakawa content.

THE NEUTRAL FACE OF NEUTRALITY

The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning - Margareta Magnusson: The youtube algorithm decided to show me people cleaning out their houses or their parents houses, and I figured I'd read this one too. I read Marie Kondo a few years ago and found it to be more my speed. This one feels like it's geared towards a slightly older audience.

DNF

Baldur's Gate 3: Listen I have a custom built PC and this game still managed to crash like it was going out of style. Originally was going to co-op with my husband and BIL but scheduling sessions was a pain in the ass. I ended up playing through to the start of Act 3 by myself on Saturday mornings for a couple months before I got tired of it. I think this also coincided with my IRL D&D burnout tbh.

Gideon the Ninth - Tamsyn Muir: another tumblr recommendation that I ended up getting from the library at a time when I didn't have the spoons to focus on it. Lots of politicking and wandering large tombs at the start. It's back in the queue, maybe I will get around to finishing it in '25.

Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone - Benjamin Stevenson: Got this to read on a flight, and I ended up doing other stuff instead.

RERUNS

Stardew Valley: Yeah 1.6. We've all seen it. I romanced Abigail this time, my amethyst-eating wife. Here's a snippet of this year's over-engineered farm (stardew planner is my life)

Pokemon Sapphire / Alpha Sapphire: Hoenn my beloved. My comfort gen. After losing my mind last year on emulated versions of a few other generations (looking at you heart gold) I tried to do a run where I'd only catch pokemon I actually liked. I managed to get up to Tate & Liza before the prospect of Shoal Cave seemed too daunting and then my life blew up at the end of the summer and that was that.

The Way of the Househusband: An easy, mindless reread. Endlessly entertaining.

Gravity Falls: Rewatched this with my husband over the last few months. The older I get, the more relatable I find Grunkle Stan, and I'm not sure that's a good thing lmao

Our Book Club Academia: What if a conspiracy board was also a book club. What if we reread BNHA from start to finish, 1 volume a week. I am using this as an excuse to figure out how/why/where things went so wrong, with the side effect of generally having a good time. Thank you, once again, to @plusultraetc for organizing 💖

[adolin]

books asks 2, 6, and 8

2. Did you reread anything? What? Gideon the Ninth :) currently rereading Harrow. Technically Lolita which I'd read before but in a different language, and Eichmann in Jerusalem which I'd read in excerpts years ago

6. Was there anything you meant to read, but never got to? SO many books. I still haven't finished Delusions of Gender by Cordelia Fine which I started in February (then I put aside because it was making me worked up ops) Our Share of Night is another big one

8. Did you meet any of your reading goals? Which ones? I read a few short stories collection and 14 nonfiction books (goal was 10) and met my total reading goal :))